Customer Reviews

Boris and Natasha [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a tribute to the ROCKY AND HIS FRIENDS (1959-1961) and THE BULLWINKLE SHOW (1961-1964) television series, David Thomas and Sally Kellerman star respectively as BORIS AND NATASHA, the two inept East European spies appearing in the original cartoon animation as adversaries of Bullwinkle and the squirrel. (Yeah, ok, even "old time" TV wasn't necessarily scintillating.)

In B&N, Pottsylvania's despotic Fearless Leader (Christopher Neame) orders our two heroes to infiltrate America in order to track down a fugitive scientist, who's developed a microchip that can reverse time. Once in the U.S., Natasha is "discovered" by hair stylist Jose (Jose Eber), who makes Natasha a media star. Only Boris, troubled by his partner's loss of focus and dedication, keeps the assignment on track.

There are a few decent sight gags, e.g. Boris and Natasha in fat suit disguises and John Travolta in a fleeting cameo. For me, however, the best feature of the film is long-legged Sally Kellerman, who manages to be sexy in a ditzy sort of way. But otherwise, the storyline is drivel. Even a 5-minute scene that includes John Candy as retired Pottsylvania super agent Kallishak, who now has a shoe-shine stand in the Big Apple, adds nothing.

Only die-hard fans of the original small screen adventures may find this movie entertaining. Having said that, where are Dudley Do-Right and Snidely Whiplash when you need them? (Daniel Day-Lewis would make a great Whiplash!)

This movie is filled with subtle comedy in the same tradition as the original animated version on the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show!
I laughed and laughed at the antics and comic situations this pair get into. If you ever saw the animated version you'll love this real life version as well! A very good movie when you want something different and lighthearted and filled with comedy so subtle that you better pay attention, which is easy to do as the movie draws you into it so easily. A great movie for collector's of real life versions of animated classics!

Me, I got this because I am a Dave Thomas fan from SCTV. He didn't disappoint, doing what he could with the material. Thomas and Sally Kellerman also chose not to attempt straight impressions of their cartoon counterparts. Unfortunately, overall, if you are R & B fans you may wince all the way through. The movie goes Jay Ward only halfheartedly, and that was probably a mistake. Rather than take the wiser approaches of caricature all the way around, or having them transplanted from animation as was done in "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle," Boris and Natasha are buffoons, but the framework they work within is all played straight. Even Fearless Leader is a competent and serious (as serious as this movie can be) character. There are a couple of good sight gags, and Thomas wrings some laughs out of situations and dialogue that might not deserve it otherwise. The movie peps up when it strays dangerously close to SCTV (John Candy's cameo, Boris and Natasha's disguises in fat suits as the Irish couple Mr. and Mrs. O'Beeth), and might have been better all the way through if they had jettisoned its Rocky and Bullwinkle parentage altogether and tried a new direction for the characters--perhaps using them as punning commentators on a real world full of humor if approached the right way. Worth 2 1/2 stars but not an option.

The rocky and Bullwinkle movie which hit theaters 8 years later then this movie was a disgrace to Jay Ward. This movie however was a great movie based of those too spies Boris and Natasha. Except for a small part of them being turned to humans Rocky and Bullwinkle don't appear in this movie. However it is filled with action that the R&B movie does not have. Great for Rocky and Bullwinkle fans and people unfimilair with the old show!

A while back I watched the Brendan Fraser movie "Dudley Do-Right" (1999) and that was a mindless bit of fun, so I had to check out what people were saying about "Boris and Natasha" (1992). I enjoyed this movie, sort of. As other reviewers have said, the narrator was fantastic. He sounded just like the old "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoon. I loved the part where he asked people to write in.

I guess what I didn't like about this film was that (to my sensibility anyway) they didn't make the main characters look like the original Boris and Natasha. Sally Kellerman was a good choice for Natasha, but why did they give her a short hairdo? In the cartoon Natasha always had 1940s-style long hair with bangs. And I just couldn't buy Dave Thomas as Boris. I'm not criticizing his acting, they simply needed someone physically built more like Danny DeVito or Joe Pesci. In fact, Joe Pesci's face and mannerisms would have really worked well. If you think your kids might enjoy this, there's a brief scene where Boris gets drunk in a strip club. It doesn't really show anything, it's just foreign to the Rocky and Bullwinkle atmosphere. I wish the filmmakers had made a little more effort to be faithful to the original material.

All in all, though, for what it is, this is an enjoyable movie. Just don't expect too much from it and it may be worth a look.

Watching "Boris and Natasha" is just plain fun! It is a funny and touching film, and wonderfully nostalgic for all us baby boomers. It's so well cast and well acted. There can be no doubt that it was a labor of love for everyone involved in it's production, and the fun is quite contageous in the watching. It lightens my heart with laughter, on those days when the world is too much with me. I consider it one of the best things I've ever bought myself.

The problem here is too much basis in the SCTV family of films. The viewer in my experience tends to take films that the producers of a TV series do and associate them with that point of origin, the way any David Spade, Wil Ferrell or Mike Myers and Dana Carvey vehicle is seen as an SNL big-screen spinoff. Also if they'd waited a few years until the turn of the new century brought us such classics as the Flintstones feature starring John Goodman, they would have benefitted from the creation of that new sub-genre; live action movies based on animated cartoons. And the choices for the starring roles might have been more believable. Like Cher as Natasha (she already has the looks and the voice, all she would have had to do is learn the East Bloc accent). And maybe Danny DeVito as Boris.

This is like The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, only with a love story. But, don't get me wrong its got mystery,comedy,and a mysterious professer,agent,chip,man in weird shoes,& man named Manelli.Want to see how it all pulls together,well then, buy it!

This turkey is part, I think, of the ongoing punishment of talents like Dave Thomas and Andrea Martin for DARING to be funny outside of Hollywood (at Second City Television), and, perhaps, for refusing to "go" Hollywood.

Any number of B-list pix have taken SCTV people and forced them to work from corporate scripts.

This movie is beyond moronic, and even columnist Jim Anchower of the Onion would need two flats of beer to sit through it. I acquired it on the street next to a dai pan dong in Hong Kong for five bucks HKD but it literally isn't worth about 75 cents US.

This America Online disk that calls itself a movie has a nearly unintelligible screen play.

News fa lash. What was hip in 1964 can be *au fait* in 2004, but you have to attack the sacred cows and the shibboleths of fat and aging baby boomers even as Rocky and Bullwinkle deconstructed our parent's Eisenhower America.

Come on. Fat and aging Baby Boomers are FUNNY when they get scared in Starbucks when a stranger speaks to them, and especially when they Support the Troops and in general laud traditional Values of which they've only heard rumours, in survey classes years ago, in junior college.

Hot off the presses. Natasha has to make an effort to look like zeee real Natasha: Borees has to make an effort to zound like zeee real Boris. I don't blame Sally and Dave. I think that they were so sick at heart after reading the script that they could not perform.

This just in. Irony can't be treated as product. You have to believe in something (start with peace and love) to be ironic about Amerikkka today, but the screen writers were clearly told that Borees and Natasha think America is great. This worked in Ivan Reitman's Stripes.

News fa-most assuredly-lash: Stripes was made when? 1981? Counsel rests and requests leave to go to the powder room to throw up.